of Jehu in Ephraim, with its after-clap in the overthrow of Athaliah in Judah. The story apparently closes with the repairing of the temple under Jehoash during the years that "Jehoiada the priest instructed him." The belief that the narrative of J extended down so late as II Kgs. xii. is as yet but a personal conviction, based on perhaps inadequate grounds; but it is traceable with practical certainty to the dedication of the temple, and is traced by Cornill and others with great probability as far as I Kgs. xvi. 34. If now we look for such a great national movement as might naturally give birth to a masterpiece of the kind, there is no epoch comparable in appropriateness with that which ensued upon the great Yahwistic revolution, the seed whereof was sown by the great Ephraimite prophets of the school of Elijah, though in Judah it was carried through under the leadership of the head of the Jerusalem priesthood. On the other hand it is certain that the story of J1 did not continue much beyond the year 800, for the work was, perhaps, already known to Amos (cf. ii. 10), and almost certainly to Hosea. In fixing the contents of the two great preëxilic documents we have thus determined within tolerably close limits their probable dates, and found them to coincide with those determined on independent grounds before the completion of this analysis. The post-exilic origin of P was made sufficiently clear in the preceding volume. The questions we have now to ask, as to the character, purpose and authorship of the three, must needs have received already some degree of illumination from this review of their subject matter. The comprehensive view thus afforded of each of the great historical documents of the Old Testament, when documentary analysis has completed its work, should serve a higher purpose than the mere enumeration of minor idiosyncrasies of the writers, favorite phrases, modes of expression, peculiarities of style and diction. In the standard critical works of Dillmann (Appendix to Nu. Dt. Jos. p. 592–690) or Wellhausen (Comp. passim.) the reader will find these criteria described at length. But the lists most convenient of access to the English reader are those of Kuenen (Hex. p. 65-158) and of Driver ("Introd. to O. T. Lit.", N. Y., 1891, p. 109-150).* In the present volume it is expected that the references and the diacritical marks of Part II. will enable the reader to judge for himself as to J's partiality for the phrases 'find favor in the eyes of,' 'land flowing with milk and honey,' break forth,' 'ground,' 'Lord,' (adonai) etc., his specification of the time of day, and similar idiosyncrasies; E's form of address, use of Jethro' for 'Hobab,' 'Horeb' for Sinai,' 'Amorite' for 'Canaanite,' ‘amah' (“ maid”), for 'shiphchah' ("maid"), 'mount of God,' 'rod of God,'' angel of God,' 'rose up early in the morning,' and the like; and that above all he cannot fail to secure some impression from the innumerable peculiarities and conventional forms of P, however hasty his perusal. But these are not results of criticism; these are the mere tools of documentary analysis. If a new definition of the higher criticism may be permitted so late, we should call it the study of the origin and development of ideas. The ideas of J, E and P are more important than their phrases, and to understand them and their implications we must trace their history. Even in J, whose work is far less dominated by theory even than E, and of course than P, we have not the work of a mere annalist; had it been so, the work would never have become the substratum of a Bible. History is here made the vehicle of an idea; a very broad and simple one, but admirably * The discussion of the documents does not look beyond the Hexateuch, and is largely taken from Dillmann's Appendix referred to above. † It is surprising that so careful and judicious a scholar as Driver should write (“ Introd.” p. 111): “It [the prophetical standpoint of E] is not brought so prominently forward as in J, and in general the narrative is more " objective," less consciously tinged by ethical and theological reflection than that of J." This complete reversal of the true relation would be unaccountable, were it not that Driver's caution leads him to confine his view almost exclusively to the inconclusive phenomena of Genesis, and to depend too much on Dillmann. It should be remembered that pp. 629ff. of Dillmann's Nu. Dt. Jos. were written as a determined effort to support the now almost abandoned theory of the priority of E and P and late date of J. Schrader is far more felicitous in calling E "the Theocratic Narrator." carried out. That idea is Yahweh's righteous government of the world is manifested in the story of his chosen people. In E, and still more in P, the narrative of Israel is decidedly subordinated to a purpose of tracing the history of special institutions, but in J the nation itself, with all its institutions, and as a whole, is the object of supreme interest; it may properly be called a HISTORY OF THE COVENANT PEOPLE OF YAHWEH. For precisely the same reason that E takes delight in relating the birth and parentage, youth and development of his great prophetic characters; whereas, once their rôle in the national history is about to begin, he subordinates the nation's career to the individual's, or even passes it over entirely, J follows a course exactly the opposite. Instead of beginning with the call of "the prophet Abraham," he begins with the remotest antecedents of the Hebrew stock, employs the cosmogonic myths to locate its true position in the world's history, and primitive ethnology in the form of discursive genealogies to determine its affinity with all surrounding peoples. Because J is supremely interested in the career of the nation, his great characters are introduced when their rôle affects the national destinies, and to this extent only. He brings in Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, in every case in full maturity, without troubling himself about their birth and childhood or pious education; their careers are only episodes in the great national drama. For the same reason archaeological data of even a purely secular character, if they have a bearing upon the history of Israel, are welcome to J. The origin of the arts and industries concerns him; he is ready to take up aetiological folk-tales accounting for all sorts of practises, customs, localities and beliefs; he does not refuse room even to the repulsive legend of Moab and Ammon, the superstitious association of the mandragora with the birth of Rachel's children, or the coarse clan-legends of the stocks of Judah. On the other hand he is not unnaturally led by the literary beauty of such idylls as the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca and the popular humor of Jacob's shepherd tricks to give them otherwise disproportionate space. When we pass from the dim region of cosmogonic, ethnologic, and aetiologic myth to the dawn of quasi-historical tradition, it is clear that J seeks to tell the story as it was, not indeed purely for its own sake, but often satisfied to let it point its own moral. For him history has a value as such, and we doubtless owe it quite as much to this as to his greater antiquity and superior sources, that as a source for actual history his narrative must be almost the sole dependence of the judicious critic. More and more apparent does this fact become as we advance, till in the story of the rise of the monarchy through the personal exploits of Saul it is clear that we are treading on the firm ground of history; whereas in E the true course of events is obscured, or distorted out of all credibility, in the endeavor to magnify the importance of "the prophet Samuel " and to make clear the unpardonable folly and sin of the people in desiring a king, instead of continuing to prosper under a theocracy administered by "prophets and judges." The contrast is perhaps even more marked in the story of David. J's splendid history of the nation under Saul and David can be judged by the Book of II Samuel, almost entirely his. E contents himself with the story of the pious shepherd-boy and the giant, the romance of David's youth and a brief statement of his mounting the throne and ruling under the fear of God' and the tutelage of the 'prophet' Nathan. The same contrast will appear to every reader even in the Pentateuch, though here there is of course less to choose. The broad and comprehensive patriotism of J is apparent in his treatment of all the tribes in Genesis, and particularly in Joshua and Judges. "The house of Joseph" is as dear to him as "the house of Judah." It comes most clearly to view in the grand national odes he attaches at salient points of the story, the Blessing of Jacob, Blessing of Balaam, Blessing of Moses and Song of Deborah. For him the ideal of national unity was realized when : "Yahweh was king in Jeshurun When the heads of the people were gathered But just as the devotion to history as such does not exclude a distinctly religious purpose, apparent in the narrative, so this fidelity to an impartial account of all the institutions of. Israel does not exclude a decided tinge of personal predilection for the institutions of the priesthood; and in the material at command, if not in his personal feeling, there appears an equally decided bent toward Judah. None but a religious historian would have given that faint glimpse toward a victory of humanity over the power of physical and moral evil in the world implied in the protevangelium; nor would another have viewed in quite the same light the call of Abram, Gen. xii. 1ff., nor allowed the moral government of Yahweh to shine through so distinctly as in the unsparing record of David's crime and weakness, calamities and repentance. In the sense of being an ultimate outgrowth of the great Yahwistic reformation of Elijah, J's narrative may justly be called “prophetic," and it certainly follows the same motto: Israel the people of Yahweh. Otherwise it would seem anything but a "prophetic" document. Only priestly institutions are traced as far back as the age of Moses, and both Joseph and Moses are allied with great priestly families; the function of interpreting the Mosaic law is given to "Aaron the Levite" (Ex. iv. 14; cf. Dt. xxxiii. 8– 10) and both the Egyptian and Sinaitic legislation are solely concerned with ritual ordinances. Only Moses, Aaron, and the priests are admitted to the audience of Yahweh on Sinai, and, in striking contrast to E, the fidelity of the Levites in the mutiny is rewarded by a perpetual tribal prerogative of the priesthood. Prophetism does not appear at all among the early institutions of Israel. Samuel is only a local "soothsayer." Joseph and Balaam are "diviners." Not until Elijah the Tishbite confronts Ahab in the vineyard of Naboth does prophetism count for anything. On the contrary the profoundest interest is taken in the fate of the ark and its priesthood. The slaughter of Nob, and escape of Ahimelech with the ephod marks the transition point between Saul and David as bearer of the national destinies, and one of the most prominent elements of David's reign is always the ark, its abiding place and its guar |